Where'd Todd Go?...
On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking
Chapter 11 - GOSSIPPING FOR LIMELIGHT
PAUL EAKIN / KJ4G
NORTHERN FLORIDA SECTION MANAGER
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR AMATEUR RADIO (ARRL)
SUMMARY: Paul Eakin took some word-of-mouth that he'd heard about someone whom he had never met and used it in a political campaign within a national amateur radio organization in order to help glean himself a position called "Northern Florida Section Manager". Mr. Eakin used someone else's ongoing personal pain and suffering behind that person's back and without his knowledge, while simultaneously destroying the victim's face in front of his peers across the entire state of Florida...and felt nothing about doing it. And when he realized he'd been caught, he tried to go on a campaign to make the victim shut up, by complaining to the National Weather Service, and to the Florida Division of Emergency Mgmt, and implying that the victim was actually picking on him and a bunch of other people. As he commonly did, Mr. Eakin falsely identified himself to me and others as an officer of the law, and as having great many ties with many important people, agencies, and organizations. As a result of this, agencies and organizatons saw him as authority figure and assumed that he knew what he was doing and some took actions against the victim based upon his words. ...No one ever stopped to actually challenge what he was saying. No one asked for verification of his facts. He acted in the name of the National Association for Amateur Radio (previously known as the American Radio Relay League, or the "ARRL" as it's still referred to even today), while on campaigns for a position within that organization. Whether they like it or not, NARA is thus responsible for this man's actions. You know...."Deep Pocket Theory", and all that. There. That should scare the hell out of some appropriate people in upper echolon, now.
Mr. Eakin, for some inexplicable reason, got himself involved in something that was not at all his business, that he actually knew nothing at all about, that he had no actual power to do anything about, and which I'm sure he now very highly regrets ever getting himself tangled in. He had no business getting involved, mush less using the appearance of having the backing of the ARRL behind him. He didn't even KNOW me. He proceeded in a public campaign against someone he'd never met, had never shaken hands with, and for quite a long time against someone he'd never even communicated with in any way. In so doing, he took responsibility for being the purveyor of facts about something without knowing the facts - at least from any reputable sources willing to make themselves known, or from anyone who seems to actually have anything tangible to hold up.
Now that person has written a blog about what Mr. Eakin did, and Mr. Eakin desperately wants him to take it down; but he can't seem to find a legal way to do anything about it. All he has to do is get a lawyer. Why can't Mr. Eakin get a lawyer? I think he should. Don't you? I mean, wouldn't it take care of all his problems with his victim? Or else, why doesn't he just call the police?
Mr. Eakin has a lot to hide from people, though. Contacting the police or a lawyer would invoke something called "Due Process", which would involve a mandatory "investigation". He doesn't want any official investigations. Investigations turn things up. They turn things up that the bad guys don't want to be turned up. Investigations usually find...the truth...truths that the bad guys don't want the public to know about.
Mr. Eakin used gossip and slander heard about me - without first obtaining any documented proof of the rumors - publicly in his personal political campaign to become ARRL Northern Florida Section Manager. He actually won and got the position. He told me that people in ham radio circles in other counties were spreading rumor about this "ham", who ran the SKYWARN program in Alachua County, who was apparently attempting to "control" the SKYWARN program there, and across northern Florida. Long story short, he implied that he was here to save the day, and that if elected he was going to be in control, and that there would be no more "dynasties". He was an outsider who had no clue what was going on, had an incorrect impression that I was a problem, and he implied that he would be in control of our local SKYWARN program. SKYWARN is an NWS program, not an ARRL program. Ham radio does not have a say in its operations. Ham radio participates in an NWS-owned program. Period. Not the other way around. He thinks it's an ARRL program. It is not. He thinks it's an ARES/RACES program. It is not an ARES/RACES program, and he is misinformed in how it actually operates. It is a Department of Commerce program; not an ARRL program. The ARRL has nothing to do with the Department of Commerce, or the National Weather Service. Mr. Eakin came into the game right off the bat thinking that he would be able to control something he neither had the power nor the authority to operate. He was a busybody who was interfering with something not in his control. He was interfering with something he did not have the authorization to interfere with. He was also misinformed on who was the problem. He was interfering with an ongoing stalking and harassment situation and making it worse for the victim. Mr. Eakin sent me an email to "explain"10 Information-wise, it was completely useless to me. It mentioned no names as far as who was spreading the gossip that he had heard. After repeatedly asking him who was spreading this misinformation, Mr. Eakin refused, time and again, to share with me any of the names of his sources, preventing me from being able to confront them about it. He was obviously not going to cooperate with me at all.
(sigh) Eakin was just another meatball Nazi and I really hate meatball Nazis. And his brand of meatball Nazi "help" was about as welcome as a fart in a phone booth.
In the email, Mr. Eakin says that he wanted to "help clear up any issues so the section business can move forward". ("...Section business?") During his campaign, he promised hams that he would make changes so that situations like what happened with Alachua County SKYWARN would not happen again. (...Whatever those "situations" were.) What did the civilian-run (i.e., not ham radio run) Alachua County SKYWARN program, which was not tied in any way to the ARRL, pose to him or to hams or to amateur radio as an "issue?"
Before I had actually come to know about it, Mr. Eakin was apparently out there campaigning about all these problems that I was causing and how he was going to come along and make all these sweeping changes to make sure that it never happened again. ...But he was leaving me completely out of the loop. And when I got wind of it my jaw dropped and I hit the roof and I wanted some accountability. The man was using my personal pain and suffering - a painful problem that I had been experiencing at the hands of local ham radio operators for years - and without knowing what he was doing, he was using it in his personal political campaign in the name of the ARRL. He evidently had no interest in hearing my side, or he would have come to me at a much earlier stage, before he had even begun campaigning using my troubles. But where had he gotten this information from?
Then Jeff Capehart comes along. It's always Jeff, you'll notice. Always the guy with all the information for some reason - and yet again, he dangles Mr. Eakin over me, telling me how there's this guy out there who is running for a position in the ARRL who is talking about (me)[emails]. And as usual, Jeff refused to tell me this guy's name for quite a while, using it to torture me, like he did with previous situations with Jay Leiberman, and Scott West, before. He would mention things just to upset me, and then withhold the name of the individual who was making the threats, or saying things about me. Then he'd claim that he was only telling me to "help" me, and that telling me who was saying it was pointless because it would only make me upset. (sigh) (pause for people to think about that for a second)
When I was finally able to get the name of this person out of Jeff, I told Jeff to have this guy contact me IMMEDIATELY. Of course, Jeff took his sweet time about it.
Finally, after threatening to bring a lawsuit against Mr. Eakin,, he then contacted me. He pretended to be very nice, and acted like he was someone there to help. He asked for my side. I explained things to him. I yet again went into the long story about what had happened...but only to waste my breath. Basically, he just wanted the information, and in order to get it he'd offered to help me. But in the end he went back on his word, and ended the conversation with "good luck" while I got absolutely nothing of any use out of him. ...Nothing that I could use to defend myself with, to make people stop talking, to know who was responsible. He was a son of a bitch. (I have recordings of our phone conversations. I'll put them up at some point when I can find the time.)
Alachua County SKYWARN was a civilian-run organization that worked extremely well. We were not "run" by any ham radio groups or by any emergency management agency. Hams could participate; they just didn't RUN us, and that was by design - which some hams didn't like. (This actually caused no problems. There were no complaints at all about us, from anyone...and that included Emergency Management. But the hams made it into a problem.) We shared important reports with EM and NWS. That was as much as we were obligated or required to do for ham radio. We're not here to recruit new hams for the local ham clubs. We're not here to offer ham radio courses. We're not here to pass flyers around for the local hams clubs. We're not here to "publicize" the local ham clubs. We're not here to teach people how to handle portable tower setup and takedown, incident command training, or to chase storms in bright orange ambulances, bring food to firefighters, be on call for fire/rescue, or anything else like that. Ham radio had no say in our organization or how it was supposed to be run.
The hams did not like that. It bugged the crap out of some who apparently wanted to be able to control ACS.
If anyone wanted to form their OWN spotter group, that was perfectly fine. We had no way of controlling that. But the implication that we had any kind power to keep people from being able to do that - here in Alachua County, and especially anywhere else in Florida - was obviously ridiculous and stupid. Mr. Eakin completely missed the total absurdity of that suggestion. It really just didn't matter to him, though. He was obviously looking for a "scandal" to use in his campaign, to shock people with, and to lure them into voting for him, and he had apparently found one and used it very well. (It sounds like it came from Phil Royce. Phil had said that he was going to try to prey on everyone's fears in a similar fashion to turn them away from ACS.) Obviously no one offered Mr. Eakin any proof of the accusation. Obviously Mr. Eakin sought to make no real hard effort to obtain such proof of the accusation beyond making a phone call to me that I forced him to make after I'd caught him spreading rumor without check. But I want it to be clear that he didn't make contact because he had made the first effort and he was trying to do the right thing or something. I put the word out publicly that I didn't like what he was doing - how he was talking about me, about ACS, and how he was completely avoiding any contact with me, and keeping me completely out of the loop. So, only to cover his ass, he finally called. But let me make this one-hundred-percent clear: he had to be given threat of lawsuit first, before he finally responded. His handling of this very sensitive situation has not in any way been exemplary. It has in fact been extremely careless and irresponsible. I have web counters here and on other pages, and I know that he's viewed this page and the relating cite subpages more than a few times; and he has not attempted to make further contact with me or to rectify the situation, or to share any of the information that I have requested from him...names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, positions of any people in some office in some agency. ...Nothing, zip, nada. This isn't fair. You can't accuse somebody of something publicly and then withhold the names of those accusing him and deny that individual any chance to defend, or to speak on his behalf, or to face his accusers. These are basic civil rights. It's basic "due process". They are a guaranteed right set forth in the Constitutional Amendments. Mr. Eakin seems to have taken them out of the picture FOR me. And this guy has on more than one occasion bragged to me that he was a "cop". So you'd think he'd know all of this.
ADDENDUM - 12/01/2011: It has been brought to my attention from quite a number of people, now, that Mr. Eakin was, in fact, NOT a cop. He was a member of the FHP "Auxiliary". This is a far cry from the actual Florida Highway Patrol. It is not the same thing. I'm now being told that he is under investigation by the FHP for, among quite a number of other things, bragging on a number of occasions that he was an actual FHP officer. I do remember in conversations with him, myself, that he bragged that he was a cop and in particular I remember him telling me that he was often called to do "crime scene investigations". Bullshit. If he was trained in crime and it's investigations then the man would have been well trained on why it's not a good idea to spread information about someone so as to protect all parties on the off chance they're innocent. Eakin was utterly and unforgivably outright CARELESS TO THE POINT OF NEGLIGENCE in that regard - at least with the handling of my own situation.
You know, I don't even think he realizes that, effectively, for all intents and purposes, by the WAY that he was using the situation of some innocent victim whom he'd never even known in his political campaign, and how it was affecting me and my life totally outside of his calloused, oblivious concern...he was actually stalking and harassing me. I'm sure he never once saw it that way, or cared. Narcissistic bullies never do. But in the end, that's basically how he ended up treating me.
At any rate, any business there was to be had should have been between us and the National Weather Service. Period. NO ONE ELSE.
But there really was no "business". It had all been made up by the Gainesville hams.
Of what I do now much later know, I know that the hams had accused me of a power play, of preventing others from being able to form their own SKYWARN groups. That was totally false. There was no proof of such a thing at all. It was all malicious rumor. What the hams weren't saying was that ACS was preventing the LOCAL hams (let me repeat...the LOCAL hams) from controlling Alachua County SKYWARN itself - not SKYWARN as a whole. There was no connection to ham radio other than the fact that they were allowed to participate at any time if they so wanted. ...And that was by deliberate design because from previous experience we knew the hams to be troublesome control-mongers, and they had been a threatening menace on more than one occasion to other competing organizations, and a very serious problem themselves.
Because of their previous attempts to interfere, we tried to keep a tight reign on the attempted control of our own group, which was a group totally separate and apart from GARS, GARC, or any other group. It had been run just fine since 1997. We cooperated WITH Emergency Management in our SKYWARN activities; but ACOEM did not control us, either. That is, they didn't own us. They had not founded our group. That was also by design. We'd seen, from history, the problems that come from EM controlling other ham agencies in other surrounding counties. John Fleming himself backed this up with stories to me about how EM and/or Sheriff's Offices in other surrounding counties had interfered with ham organizations before, basically taking control of much of their operations, sometimes confiscating equipment. We tried to avoid that by being a completely separate group. The hams went to EM and used that with a dark twist, and made them angry by touting that we were trying to control everything, and EM believed it. In the past, we'd repeatedly offered hams a chance to be more closely involved with us. But they chose not to - even voting on it - most often citing that they would not support us with finances or manpower, but they would "support the concept and idea". This is basically the BS way of saying, while clapping to make it sound good, "We're so proud of what you're doing - but we just don't want to get involved." And then getting them to try to actually help you was difficult. It was trying to gather chickens, or perhaps more accurately, about like trying to get people with no sense of direction to run in a straight line.
We TRIED to hold spotter nets. GARS members would never volunteer or come forward to RUN nets. Everyone wanted the free shirts with logos, and everyone wanted the titles for the bragging rights and the resumes. But when the time came for people to do their jobs, everyone was always "busy." And they wanted to chase, not to be bogged down to a microphone at a desk at home. But we didn't support chasing, either; and hams didn't like that. (Individually, and when held to be off the record, we found the hams actually just wanted to chase storms - which was dangerous, and again, we didn't support that. But officially and on the record, well then of course they all condemned chasing. UGH! It drove me nuts.) GARS could have formed their own spotter section too, you know. But for some reason they chose not to. But in our experience whenever we tried to hold nets, they accused us of storm chasing (so as to villainize us), and they forbade us from holding any weather spotting nets; or they attempted to make people who participated in the nets pay dues twice (which was illegal) because we were calling it the "Alachua County SKYWARN Net"...even though most of the participants were already currently-paying members of GARS. The proposal came from Bill Wells/K4RDP, whose idea basically amounted to a "use tax" or a "road tax" on the repeater, which was also against the law. It was kept within the Executive Board, and they threatened us with it. But knowledge of it was not shared with the General Membership, and they did not record it in the Secretary's Report as they were legally supposed to, so that the ARRL and the FCC would not know about it.
GARS was never cooperative and some of it's members even made it perfectly clear to us that any spotter nets held whenever there was a storm were quite frankly seen as a real pain in the ass to them, because they wanted to ragchew (gab on the air), and to those individuals, the spotter nets got in the way of that. They even told us this, flat out, over the air. To that end, it started to become a problem every time there were storms. There'd be NO ONE on the air all day...until a storm came, and then suddenly people from GARS would get on there and "ragchew" (hold long conversations and refuse to vacate the frequency when requested) in order to prevent us from operating. I actually have recordings of hams doing this. It was HAMS who got in the way of having any kind of spotter nets, not the other way around as the rumors suggested. Mr. Eakin was WAY out of his ballgame with this, and he had absolutely NO REAL CLUE what was actually going on down here. He was interfering with stuff that involved both civil and criminal investigations and they were still ongoing at the time that he was mucking around with things. The man had no business ever getting involved in this stuff at ALL. All he did was fan flames, and make things worse for me in my connections with FDEM in Tallahassee, and here at home, by the use of his unresearched, unverified, and extremely irresponsible gossip...
I've had hams stalking and harassing me for many years. I've put up with it for a long time. But this, this is just totally ridiculous. Today, there are no spotter nets, because the ARES program runs none, the redneck hams hog the frequency during inclement weather. And it STILL goes on today. Eakin's done nothing to make good on his promise. Supposedly we've been out of the way for a number of years, now. What's the problem NOW? It's called lack of participation, inability to reach volunteers. The enthusiasm base just isn't there. Right now, there is NO spotter program anymore because of the HAMS, not because of Todd Sherman, or the civilian organization that he ran called "Alachua County SKYWARN". Mr. Eakin has done me and ACS a grave, extremely unnecessary, and not-asked-for disservice by his unwarranted interference and lack of knowledge, and lack of care for accuracy OR follow-through in his "investigating" practices. Paul Eakin acted incompetently, irrationally, and irresponsibly.
Mr. Eakin had REPEATEDLY been asked over the time since he nosed his way into our lives to come forward with contact information regarding his "witnesses" and he has refused any contact. He is attempting to elude me and all it is doing is making me angry and I am thinking of having a compel order issued not to him but the ARRL. I think I'm going to have to involve the ARRL directly in this, hold them responsible, go after them. This seems like it's going to have to be the way if I want anything done.
We NEVER told anyone at ANY time that they could not form their own group. We never at any time had that kind of POWER. There is no documentation to support that...ANYWHERE. What IDIOT goes around believing that some individual has more power than NWS and EM and is able to "control" people in the manner suggested in his email, and DOESN'T see it as obvious BS? It doesn't make sense. He was also told that his Alachua County Emergency Coordinator, Jeff Capehart/W4UFL, was in fact a very serious problem for me; and yet, Mr. Eakin went to him anyway for advice on the situation and how to handle it! Jeff also knew in FULL DETAIL just EXACTLY what was going on down here and, advising Mr. Eakin that the situation had "resolved itself" (UGH!), was an outright lie on his part. It had not "resolved" at all, and the harassments still went on - even as recently as March of this year (2009), and there is still at this time no SKYWARN spotter program in this county. What Jeff meant was, ACS had been rendered impotent as far as any further spotter training classes would go; and for a SHORT time, he and Melissa were in the process of creating a group using our group's already existing name, and at the time everything looked like it might actually go THROUGH. But then I caught on and threatened a lawsuit and tried to get ACOEM to cease attempting to use our name and to cease all attempts to take over our group, AND to try to get control of the hams whom they were supporting who were stalking me. ACOEM stopped the takeover attempt; they SLOWLY removed references to the ACS name in PUBLIC documentation that was being handed out; but references on the web still exist, and can still be seen. But they did nothing about the hams, and continue even today to support some of them. Otherwise, they threw up their hands and gave up altogether.
I don't blame them. The whole situation was crazy. But they BLAMED ME, instead of acknowledging anything that I was telling them. They took actions which caused me great harm. They tried to hide it all under the table. Now they're responsible. They stopped everything involving the takeover before things got WAY out of hand; which is good. I actually understand that thinking. They began to realize they had no clue what was going on around them and that people were being hurt and now they could be held directly responsible. So they ceased EVERYTHING. But it hardly helps the victims out there. They brought this upon themselves, though. It does no good to blame ME. It would do them a lot of good to admit what they did, that they were duped, and take the heat. But blaming me is just easier, and doesn't cost a career, and the loss of an entire home.
In the end, I can't believe it went this far. In the end, I can't believe people took unconfirmed information and went so FAR with it, took the drastic ACTIONS that they did, ENCOURAGED the stalkers without check as they did. It's still sort of a dizzying nightmarish realization. And it happened...because no one wanted to dare challenge the Monarchs and tell them that they weren't really WEARING any clothes, for fear of what could happen to them if they did. This whole thing...it's as simple and as complicated as that. Some people saw opportunity; USED my situation. Mr. Eakin was one.
In the end, Mr. Eakin ACTED like he wanted to help, gathered information off me to use towards his own political ends, and then did nothing to help at ALL. He'd answered NONE of my original questions, stayed WAY off topic, BRAGGED of himself and gave me political literature, shared NONE of the contact information with me that I had originally asked him for, and he abandoned me. He inflamed a situation, and then left me hanging. He had no intention of actually getting involved in any real way to correct the situation. He was full of it. Mr. Eakin involved himself in something that was not any of his business, that he was not privy to official information about, his sources were not backed up by anything official. He caused harm to an innocent person and only exaggerated an already bad situation that I was going through...and he used the name of the ARRL to do it. He should be held responsible for that.
His suggestion of "management" of our situation is out of place. His world is amateur radio, not SKYWARN.
This is a common confusion among hams...that SKYWARN is an ARRL thing; that SKYWARN is a ham radio thing. That is incorrect. It is a DoC thing. An NWS thing. Ham radio can participate in it. That's as far as ham radio "control" of SKYWARN goes. Our program was deliberately decided to be civilian-run for a few very good reasons: 1) the local hams here get into too much trouble and have shown consistent inability to follow through with instructions, or to adhere to safety standards. 2) None of the local area ham radio clubs wished to support the general, non-ham, civilian public if we formed a SKYWARN group under them. They made that loudly clear to us. We wanted to support everyone. 3) I'd seen the past mistakes and problems that other surrounding county clubs have repeatedly had with involving themselves with Emergency Management. They have a bad history of tending to want to run everything like a military operation, requiring people to take all sorts of courses which are wholly inappropriate and totally unnecessary for anyone who is a SKYWARN spotter. Spotters are required to look up, identify a potential severe threat, and pick up a cellphone. I'm sorry but that is all that there is to their mission. Requiring EMCOMM this and EMRISS that training, dragging a heavy dummy across a track, becoming a member of CERT, or ACFR-Reserves, or other EM programs, or learning Incident Command...these things have nothing at all to do with spotting. There is zero argument on this. The problem lay in the fact that some hams simply disagreed with how I ran AC-SKYWARN. What they meant was that I would not relinquish control of the organization that I had founded to them. They could have started their own if they wanted, at any time. But I wasn't going to allow ACS to be destroyed by politics, or by hams who couldn't follow instructions who followed truckers through five counties when specifically told not to when they thought the guy was a jammer (see full story). With the hams, I always had to have my management hat on, and I denied some projects for expense, for lack of manpower, and even because they were just ridiculous. Some hams did not like this. So yes, in this sense, I was a tyrannical leadership type. But anyone who ever puts on a management hat knows exactly what I mean. I'm not a jerk. I always did the right things and the most prudent things. What they meant was...that ACS was SO good in what it did that we tended to overshadow the other organizations. This made some hams angry. We had no objection to more spotter groups, especially under ham radio groups. I'd even expressed this idea to Jeff Capehart a number of times. But the hams were busy developing plans to try to use ACOEM to steal Alachua County SKYWARN out from underneath, by forging business cards and making ACOEM's leaders believe that I was handing ACS over to the hams. I don't know why they had to have the ACS program or nothing else. They could have easily created their own GARS spotter program, or GARC spotter program. I always encouraged more spotters, and my classes often had a hundred at a time, in fact, which is kind of unprecedented. In fact, NWS funding was tight one year and I actually forked out the money out of my own pocket to mail out Advanced certificates to those spotters that the NWS could not afford the actual postage for!!!11 I've spent hundreds on the Alachua County EMWIN Project, myself. But hams wanted a coup, and taking over another organization I guess sounded like more fun. So they spread rumors that I was a tyrant and a problem and tried to take ACS surreptitiously, and all it did was get a whole lot of people and agencies in trouble for it. All the cloak and dagger and subterfuge stuff... It really just wasn't worth it in the end.
...And Mr. Eakin? He had absolutely no clue about this. But then, he deserves what he got. Mr. Eakin bragged of being in forensics investigating. Well, had he done any sort of "investigating" before using what he'd heard about someone in a hugely public political campaign...he wouldn't be here, right now, burning in his own self-started flames. Mr. Eakin brought this on himself. No one held any guns to his head. He should have checked facts, first.
This is what I mean. You have to be careful with gossip and rumor. It could be malicious falsities, designed to make good people fall for it and to do just exactly what they all ended up being conned into doing here in the end. Mr. Eakin had been duped by the very hams he says he serves. He deserves it. He's been told.
This also serves as perfect example why I made ACS a civilian-run, not a ham-run, organization. There was a good reason for it. I've lived here in Gainesville for a very long time. I've been a ham here for 25-plus years, now. I know my local area hams. They are NOT responsible. They gossip way too much. They get into way too much trouble. They have to be babysat, twenty-four-hours-a-day. They tend to blame others for their mistakes as a standard. They're not willing to take full responsibility for their actions. They want you to cover for them when they screw up, etc., etc., etc. These idiots who come from out of town, who take rumor and then take some form of action against me and/or who interfere not knowing the full situation, and not willing to hear the full situation or to do much research at all...they have no business getting involved. In Paul's case...we have yet to even meet face-to-face. We've had two phone calls. The man does not know enough about me to make any kind of an educated guess, much less a "judgment", even. Paul's involvement in our affairs, was inappropriate ,and had no business even happening. We're not a ham radio club. We're not an ARRL club. Where the HELL does Mr. Eakin or the ARRL fit in with us or have any SAY in our operations or right to operate peacefully? But if anyone wanted to get involved in "finding the truth", they should have hired a lawyer for me. That would have gotten right too it right fast. But I note nobody seems willing to involve any lawyers, or DO any inquiries, or any investigations, or otherwise risk putting anything going on here into any official, publicized record. Very interesting. No, that would be too dangerous a thing...to actually have any kind of investigation into organizational and agency ethical actions. Right? I've actually been demanding official inquiries and investigations for years now and no one seems the least bit interested in actually getting involved in doing such a thing. Interesting, indeed. Sure sounds shady to me. ...NOBODY TRUSTS THIER POSITIONS STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD UP TO CLOSE AND/OR PUBLIC SCRUTINY? Hmm. That's scary, if anything.
Mr. Eakin had been out there discussing me and Alachua County SKYWARN with other people and having open public discussions about me and Alachua County SKYWARN and decided to leave me completely out of the loop. I found out only because one of my ham radio stalkers was using his knowledge of it to torture me. Mr. Eakin would have gotten away with it had Jeff Capehart kept his mouth shut. At first he'd just tell me that there was this ARRL guy out there who was talking about me in the public circuit, in his political campaign suggesting that he was going to "take care of" situations such as mine. Jeff would not reveal to me who it was for some time, then finally admitted it to me. I put the word out that I didn't appreciate it and that I wanted him to stop and to do the right thing and to contact me before he spreads rumor like that, talking about it in public circles without any verification that it's true or not. So he finally he decided to contact me.
Mr. Eakin would NOT divulge to any names, or titles, or positions, or contact information of those whom he had heard the gossip from. Jeff Capehart had also added that Mr. Eakin had said he'd also heard things from people at NWS-JAX, NWS-Tallahassee, and in the Florida Division of Emergency Mgmt. Mr. Eakin refused to tell me WHO specifically was saying these things, or what exactly was said - only that it was about me and it had to do with "problems". He said that he wanted to know "my side". I thought he meant to HELP me. But apparently, he only intended to gather further fodder to use in his campaign, and then he just as abruptly left me hanging once he'd gotten what he wanted. On the phone, he told me that he was also a cop - one who deals in crime scene forensics, too. This bothers me especially because he took gossip and slander and rumors, my personal pain and suffering, and USED it in his personal political campaign, without so much as a signed document in example to prove anything first, not a complaint filed, not a judgment in his hands. Nothing. There WAS none. He put those rumors back out in the public circuit in a wider, uncontrolled way. That's not fair. There was only one SKYWARN program at the time...mine. And I was the "guy" who "ran" it. He took gossip and slander and rumor, and purported it publicly as if it was fact SOLELY because of the status level of the source, not because he had anything to prove the rumors. He said he was going to do things to "prevent these kinds of things from happening again." WHAT things?!!! He wouldn't tell me. But in doing this, he not only put himself in the way of a lawsuit, but the American Radio Relay League, too - the agency that he was a member of, and for which he was running for a position in. His involvement in my personal affairs and spreading them out in public has only exasperated an already painful situation for me, made it worse, spread it farther out into public than it needed to be, and helped it get even farther out of control; and he DID it...because he wanted to use it in a way to boost his political career. I think he should have acted much more prudently and carefully. He acted wholly inappropriately, and USED my situation to help gain himself a personal goal - a political position within the ARRL; a status level. I have repeatedly tried to get names and specifics out of this guy, and he has repeatedly ignored my emails and calls. He's just NOT willing to cooperate. It's okay to talk about what he's heard about ME; but when I want to try to do something to get to the SOURCES, why gee that's not allowed because now he's revealing personal information about innocent people. Am I guessing his line of thinking correctly here? He UNDERSTANDS privacy and protection and realizes control is important but when it comes to ME, why, that's different?
At the very least, his email verifies that NWS-JAX DID INDEED talk to other people about there being problems with me and ACS, contrary to their public denials. I still need to know the name of the individual(s) that he got this information from. Spreading rumor about me and then PROTECTING the person(s) spreading it is wrong, extremely unethical for someone holding the position and title for the organization that he does, and unfairly violates my civil rights. Being careful with what he says NOW is just way too late and he needs to do the right thing.
Still. He's a cop. He's supposed to be logical, reasonable, CAREFUL - with evidence, evidentiary contamination, rumor and misinformation control, keeping things generally always under control. He's supposed to be TRAINED in all of this. But with me, I guess that's just out the window? I don't see his handling of the situation as fair at all, and he's made my life only that much more difficult by spreading the gossip farther out there than I can even TRY to get a hold on it. On top of that, he's not willing to share with me his sources and for that, I'm thinking about a lawsuit against the ARRL. This supposedly responsible man, supposedly trained man, acted so very irresponsibly; and not only that...but forensically incorrectly, ineptly, and inappropriately. He aided in making my situation even worse, and he did it "on the clock" for the ARRL. So without even knowing that it was happening, the ARRL had now become responsible for something a rogue officer in it's ranks was doing. If he wants to REALLY do the right thing, he should come to me with names and specifics about what was said and who said what, so that I can actually begin to defend myself. I MAY be lenient; but I make no promises. What he did was wrong. Period. He is not in a position to bargain. Without even knowing me or anything about me, he aided in destroying my name and reputation, and in nailing the coffin on a perfectly good storm spotting organization which had done nothing wrong to anyone, and then put his own organization (the ARRL) at risk of a lawsuit, too. I may have a restraining order issued against this guy. He's acting really shady and staying out of contact and isn't willing to share sources of gossip and this means he is out of control, irresponsible, and dangerous.
NOTE:I've noticed hits from keyword searches hunting for an attorney in Jacksonville named "Paul Eakin". The Paul Eakin mentioned herein is not the same person. The Paul Eakin mentioned in this blog is an amateur radio operator with the callsign of KJ4G, full name Paul L. Eakin. The attorney's full name is Paul M. Eakin. They are not the same person and as far as I'm aware they are not related to each other, either.
